o; you mustn't mistake me. I haven't been coming to you for
criticism," was Griswold's rather incoherent reply; and when the talk
threatened to lapse into the commonplaces, he took his leave. Oddly
enough, as he thought, when he was unlatching the gate and had shifted
one of the newly purchased automatic pistols from his hip pocket to an
outside pocket of the light top-coat he was wearing, the shadowy figure
under the lake-shading trees had disappeared.

It was only a few minutes after the lingering dinner guest had gone when
the doctor came out on the porch, bringing his long-stemmed pipe for a
bedtime whiff in the open air.

"You are losing your beauty sleep, little girl," he said, dropping into
the chair lately occupied by the guest. "Did you find out anything more
to-night?"

The daughter did not reply at once, and when she did there was a note of
freshly summoned hardihood in her voice.

"We were both mistaken," she affirmed. "Coincidences are always likely
to be misleading. I am sorry I told you about them. He has certainly
been a present help in time of need to Edward."

"How did you reach your conclusion?" inquired the pipe smoker, upon whom
the coincidences were still actively exerting their influence.

"It came out in the talk this evening. He has been rather ridiculously
putting me upon a pedestal, trying to make me fit an ideal character in
his book, I think. To prove to him that I am only human, I told him the
story of what happened on the _Belle Julie_. And, to cap the climax, I
pointed out our friend Mr. Broffin, who was on guard again--as
usual--and told him who the house watcher was and what he wanted. It
didn't affect him any more than it would any friend of the family. He
was interested in the story as a story, and--and in its bearing upon me
as a--as a life-experience. But that was all."

"You may be right; you probably are right," was the father's comment
after a thoughtful whiff or two had intervened. "Just the same, I've
looked up the dates in my case book: if your Gavitt man, escaping from
the officers in St. Louis, had taken the first train for Wahaska, he
would have reached here at precisely the same moment that the sick Mr.
Griswold did. Also, he would have been careful to remove all the little
tags and telltales from his brand-new clothes--which was what Mr.
Griswold very evidently had done. Also, again, the amount of money which
Mr. Griswold has put into the Raymer capital stock talli